[sllug-members]: [sllug-members] New release of free Sun compilers for GNU/Linux IA-32 and AMD64

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Last November, on another mailing list, I reported preliminary
experience with Sun's free C++ and Fortran 90/95 compilers that
support interval arithmetic.

At the time, such support was available only for Solaris SPARC
systems, and neither Fortran nor C++ was supported on GNU/Linux
systems, although C was.

I'm pleased to announce that the latest release of these excellent
compilers is now available with interval arithmetic support for
Solaris SPARC and IA-32, and for GNU/Linux on AMD64 and EM64T (both
also known as x86_64).  Fortran and C++ are supported on GNU/Linux
IA-32, but interval arithmetic is not:

IA-32:
	% sunf95 -xia dintsin.f95 && ./a.out
	f95: Intervals are only supported for -xarch=sse2 or -xarch=amd64

AMD64:
	% sunf95 -xia dintsin.f95 && ./a.out
	 2.220446049250313E-16 [1.4999999999999988,1.5000000000000012]

In addition to the support for more platforms, the compilers now
recognize several gcc-specific features, including -m32 and -m64 to
set the memory-addressing model, -xMD, -xMF, and -xMMD to generate
Makefile dependencies, #include_next, and the __attributes__
qualifier.

The compilers now have aliases with the prefix "sun": suncc, sunCC,
sunf90, sunf77, sunf95, sunc89, sunc99, and sunas, making it easy for
them to coexist in the standard search path without shadowing the
vendor-provided compilers in /usr/bin.

These changes should make the Sun compilers work much better in a
GNU/Linux environment, and I have been routinely using them in
software builds in several different compilation environments on
GNU/Linux systems on IA-32 and AMD64 CPUs, using the automated build
tool described in Chapter 8 of our book ``Classic Shell Scripting'':

	http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/books/css

If GNU/Linux compatibility support is installed on FreeBSD, NetBSD,
and OpenBSD systems (see "man compat_linux" on those system for
details), it should be possible to run the Sun compilers on those
operating systems as well.  While I plan to make such experiments,
I have yet to do.

If a similar compatibility layer ever gets added to Apple Mac OS X on
their new Intel-based products, then those systems as well may be able
to run the Sun compilers in the future.

More details can be found here:

	http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/cc/downloads/express.jsp
	http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/cc/downloads/express_readme.html

PS-1:	The only personal information required to download the compilers is
	your email address.

PS-2:	A word of warning for installers and systems managers: in
	previous releases, the Sun compiler suite on GNU/Linux
	unbundled into /opt/sun only.

	In this new release, it also creates two other trees: /db and
	/usr/OpenMotif-2.1.31.  Neither exists in standard GNU/Linux
	installations, so there is no conflict with existing files.

	I had to manually propagate those two extra directories to our
	many client machines that otherwise get /opt and /usr/local
	mirrored nightly from master servers.

	Here are the disk space requirements:

		% du -skh /opt/sun /db /usr/OpenMotif-2.1.31/
		1001M   /opt/sun
		4.3M    /db
		20M     /usr/OpenMotif-2.1.31/

PS-3:	For some reason, the compiler manual pages are not included in
	the GNU/Linux distribution, but they can be found online at

		http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/cc/documentation/ss11/index.html

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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